Communications Built on Strong Foundations

Since 1996, Foundation Scotland (formerly Scottish Community Foundation) has been working with individuals and organisations to help them give to good causes effectively and inexpensively.

They provide administration and management support services to make their charitable giving easy and tax-efficient, while also offering clients independent advice on charitable giving and a professional grant-making service, linking them to exceptional charities which are seeking funding.

Last year, on behalf of their donors, they distributed over £8M, making them one of the largest funders of the voluntary sector in Scotland.

 Challenges

 Foundation Scotland’s strong Communities team spend some of their working week travelling up and down the country, making reliable mobile phones essential. However, the organisation had been encountering some challenges with its previous supplier.

Realising a change of supplier was necessary, Laura McLeod, Office, Facilities and Procurement Coordinator began making inquiries about potential alternatives in July 2019.

Assessment and Recommendations

Laura got in touch with GoodCall late  in the Summer of 2019.

Laura said, “We were really impressed by the team from the outset, and their level of expertise. You don’t always know what you’re getting with telecoms companies but GoodCall’s way of working fitted really well with our’s. We discussed our existing service, what we were looking for and what was important to us, from saving money to ensuring a strong signal for our remote workers.”

A total of 13 lines were installed, with new Android handsets provided in November 2019.

The Benefits

 One of the key benefits of moving to GoodCall was keeping costs down, both through lower line rental and the award of a hardware fund towards their new handsets.

Laura explained “I’d already spoken to a couple of organisations prior to contacting GoodCall, but nobody could offer free handsets, or even handsets at a reasonable cost, so after finding out the monthly cost, we decided to go with GoodCall. Whether it’s gas and electricity, water or catering, we have to keep costs down through our entire supply chain and save as much as we can, so we’re delighted with the savings we’ve made.  GoodCall also made it so easy for us – even the invoicing is simple, allowing us to save on time as well as money.”

As well as the organisational benefits, the new lines and handsets have also played a key role in making the workforce more efficient.

Laura added, “We’ve had some great feedback from staff on what the new phones mean to them on the ground. One colleague mentioned that he had recently returned to an area where he had previously struggled to get a signal but, since changing to a different network through GoodCall, he now receives signal in that particular location. Staff are also reporting better battery life. To the individual staff members, how the phone performs is what matters most at the end of the day but moving to GoodCall has made sense across the board.”

You can find out more about the work of Foundation Scotland on their website.